Apart from a, now sorted, wobble over sweat shops etc I have an irrational love for this brand. Not as a strategist mind, but as an emotionally driven human being. In fact, locically, all planners should be immune to brands, since we're supposed to know how they work, but we fall their irrational lure because we're still people with a deep need to construct and share our identity like everybody else.

Walk into any boutique agency and look at the sea of check shirts and thick rimmed glasses if you don't believe me.

Anyway.

I remember at school,it must have been around 1988, everyone had Nike Air Pegasus, but I can't say I was particularly interested until I saw this ad.

I loved playing tennis but hated the culture that went with it in the UK.

Juniors should be seen and not heard.

We encourage you to wear white.

Does your face fit?

It's not polite to want to win.

Rules. Conformity. A bastion of middle class. I was brought up in a 'well to do' market town. Naturally I hated it.

That ad was everything I wanted in tennis. So I saved the money I earned from working in our local sports shop on weekends and bought a pair of 'Hot Lava' trainers.

Horrifically gharish and ugly. That was the point. And yes, I know how quaint it sounds, little middle class boy thinks he's a rebel buying trainers. It is silly, but brands are silly, they're irrational.

Somewhere in my subconscious, I've never forgotten how that felt and it's only been enforced by over 20 years of other ads and stuff. Despite demonstrating a rebelious streak by opening my mouth these days, rather than uniform, I still only buy Nike, anything else just wouldn't feel right.

By the way, if you know where I can get a pair of these trainers again, let me know, I'm going through some sort of grasping at youth retro thing (that's an invite for spam comments if there ever was one).

February 18, 2011

When I started out as a planner I didn't really have a clue what I was doing. No planning director mentor type person, little time spent with planners as a distinctly average suite none of that. All I got was a a few (useful) APG courses, the generosity of planner blogs and the suspicion I'd never really been a suit, but a sort of planner who always always lost, forgot to invoices and far too shy.

And that is why I'm convinced I've survived out here where planners are both rare and, largely unwanted. Much of 'being a planner' has involved figuring out what a planner actually is. And that has largely been a good thing.

When you're a little scared because you don't know something you really should, you work bloody hard to make up for it and, here's the good bit, the lack of constraints from 'rules' provides all sorts of possibilitily that's absent from 'doing it properly' .

Contrast that with knowing it all - you stop trying, you stop developing and just like a shark, when you stop moving forward, you die. When you're no longer an idiot, you're fishfood.

That's why I still love it when I'm nervous, when I don't think I quite know what I'm doing. It's those times, when you're Using the Force, when all you've got is your instincts, when you're the most likely to do something great, that no one else will because you won't be doing it like them; for Gods sake, you don't KNOW how to do it like them. I like it when I'm making it up as I go along.

Which is why I like stuff, people and situations that shock me to death, make me uncomfortable, have no respect for me at all (yes I know that's everyone) and make me mad, angry and even scared. That's why I like digital stuff, lets be honest, no one really knows how to 'do it', come to think of, no one knows how to 'do' old school advertising either, they just try and bring in 'sciency' rubbish that makes it look that way - sometimes they even believe the sciency rubbish.

There's another by product of not knowing anything. It doesn't have much respect for authority and experience it doesn't have any time to kiss someone arse for what they did 10 years ago or even 10 minutes ago.

The problem with tried and tested people with all that experience and knowledge is that they tend to do things the same way every time and, according to Einstein, doing the same thing over and over, with the expectation of a different result is the very definition of insanity (I'm presuming this was before anyone was getting to grips with quantum mechanics by the way) which is what 'The Disruption Agency' is such a contradiction in terms. As soon as you have a process for Disruption (and believe me they have. In triplicate) guess what happens? Dead right.

So if you're in am agency that 'doesn't do it right', if you haven't got a world famous, genius mentor, if you've been asked to do something right out of your comfort zone, your head feels like it's going to explode, you don't know what you're doing or how the hell you'll figure it out...good. That's right where you want to be as far as I'm concerned. Figure it out, make it work, you're probably about to do the best work of your life.

Don't accept what someone else tells you just because they're older, more important, more famous or whatever. Be a pain in the arse, question everything; authority, the process, the ideas, the research. Everything.

Forget all that 'you can't break the rules until you know what they are' claptrap. You're at your most lethal when you don't even know what they are.

February 16, 2011

I got an email from someone asking for some advice the other day, wanting a viewpoint on how to be a really useful planner in a small place, without all the data and information resources you might be used to at a big leviathan agency network, the time or budget for primary research ...and being able to add something to a department where there are already some great intuitive brains.

Two points here. First, I'm always amazed when someone asks for advice, as if I know what I'm talking about, but more pertinently, people do actually read this silly blog and take some of the things said here with a measure of seriousness. That's a responsibility that should be treated with respect.

Secondly, I like trying to give out useful advice. Not because I have delusions of grandeur I hasten to add, but because sharing some useful (?) tips forces you to think about you own working habits and how realistically you live up to what you're advising. It's rare you're completely whiter and white and it's a useful reminder to never get lazy or cut corners. There's no way you can avoid doing the work.

It struck me I might actually have some stuff of use, not if you're a fancy pants hotshot who's worked in big hubs like London or New York, for big fancy pants agencies, however, if you're finding your feet, trying to learn without any great mentoring, or trying to do your job in a placed not that used to planning and it's value, well, I really don't mind helping out. Seriously.

Anyway, this is what I wrote (edited for confidentility and general public consumption).

Hi there

It’s a bugger when you don’t have the tools. I used to love TGI and struggled for a bit without it, until I realized that all it did, and this goes for most quant in my view, nothing more than validate what I already knew.

Now, how can you do stuff already great 'intuitive' planners don't do already without that kind of stuff?

My first point is about intuition, using your guts. Your guts have shit for brains because you will base everything on your own experiences. We all do. We’re all biased. There is a way around this, which will make you better than them though.

Do thought experiments, find a point of connection between your own experience and something you know about your audience’s experience. For example, if you want to know how to sell running shoes to men who fetishise them as pieces of design (that’s most of us) you can relate it to how a woman thinks about shoes. I did some work on women’s hair straighteners and didn’t get under the skin of how women felt about how it transformed their looks until I remembered what it was like to wear my first decent suit...helped me anyway.

You can do that sitting at your desk and, if you work hard at thinking about genuinely similar experiences you won’t go far wrong because we all behave the same - you just need to find that connective experience in the first place.

On the same note, become specialist in something they’re not….I suggest become the in house behavioural economics and social anthropoligist expert – read Dan Ariely, read Thaler Sunstein’s Nudge, read Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness, read Grant McCrackens books and everything you can on ‘choice architecture’. These are universals on how people behave and can be applied to anything. It's not new, but not enough are using proper behavioural psychology well.

Now for trend suppliers. They are a waste of money. You can find trends just by reading a newspaper – spend more time absorbing as much popular culture as you can, what are the patterns? What do they mean? What could they mean? Look at the culture around the category, the conventions etc – how does that conflict or not capture the relevance of what’s going on in their real lives? Collect a scrapbook of interesting stuff that might be relevant now, but more likely will be relevant for something you’re not doing yet.

Have a read of Douglas Holt’s two books on cultural strategy – especially the second. There’s a way of going about things, a process that’s great, unique and delivers proper commercial results. Have a go at that process.

Finally, be truly great at qual. I don’t mean focus groups and depths etc. I mean going out and meeting your audience in their own environment. There’s so much that’s wrong with groups – group think, people not being able to articulate how they feel etc they are not that reliable. Get confident and talk to people at ‘the scene of the crime’. Just observing how they behave, the atmosphere etc is more useful than groups. I understood more about the role of biscuits in a UK mum’s life when I attended one of my mother in law’s coffee mornings than masses of available data. I got under the skin of men and their motorbikes by spending a morning at two motorbike retailers and talking to a few staff and customers (they see themselves as the last wolves in world of sheep if you’re interested). This kind of research is quick, cheap and more useful than more formal ‘primary’ research.

Finally, read all the academic, pop cultural books you can around the category, and wierder stuff around that, you’ll quickly get to the stuff that’s really driving it. I got some good stuff for a UK frozen burger brand through an quick look at the category conventions – on a product level, it was all about health, on a brand level, it was all about making Mum’s feel guilty about not playing with their kids enough…but we remembered that our own experiences of burgers as kids was as the food our Mum’s gave us when we had our friend’s around – fuel for good old fashioned playing. This was getting us somewhere, but it was only when I read a relativeley heavy weight book on parenting and the state of kids in the UK that we found one of the biggest issues for a UK Mum these days - culture forces her overprotect her little darlings, which is actually harming kids happiness by stopping making the firm friendships kids need, that only come when parents leave them alone to play together. On a product level, the burgers were something you could leave kids to eat without worry – all kids love burgers, on a brand level, we encourage them to lighten up, get some ‘me time’ and let their kids play without interferance , which flew in the face of the category culture that, to be honest makes them feel guilty and bad and has the same kind of cultural codes - the have it all Mum and the close knit middle class family. Kids need to be left alone to make proper friends, let them.

February 14, 2011

How many hours have you spent in brainstorms, workshops, idea generation sessions or, God forbid, Disruption Days or Media Arts workshops? It must be hundreds and that's not counting the time spent painstakingly preparing stimulus, dressing the room etc.

I'll bet though, you can't think of a single, genuinely good idea that came out of nay of them. All that eye wateringly expensive, stage managed time wasted.

Naturally, agencies will claim that all sorts of Damascene moments have been created in these monumental wastes of time - and I'm sure there have been rare miracle moments when something good has emerged - but the reality is there is little good that comes out of brainstorms.

Mostly you're left with a series of half baked ideas that aren't any good, or some stupid 'out there' stuff that are just unworkable. The master moderator therefore plans the session with the guile and cunning of Wile E Coyote and steers everything towards a pre-planned Eureka moment, or post rationalises a genuinely good idea to death, to show how it was born straight of the crap brainstorm output, when of course if wasn't anything of the sort.

Academic research has shown again and again that brainstorms produce idea that are much poorer in quality than working alone or in a focused team. You're much more likely to have a good idea making the tea (mostly down to working like this).

In case you're wondering why these sessions stifle creativity, there's 'social loafing'..where the group dynamic lets individuals doss around, a natural nervousness of being judges for ideas and holding back, the agenda and 'one person at a time' getting in the way of spontaneity and ideas never getting voiced because you're waiting for someone else to finish. There's the dangers of groups think where we conform to the prevailing mood - usually polarised as ultra conservatism or rampant wackiness, both of which are useless. Then there's the simple fact that the pressure to have ideas usually means you can't have any - a little like trying to force yourself to sleep.

The ugly truth is that they're pretty good for client bonding and a great day out of the office for them. They like being at the agency and pretending to be creative etc, for a little while it's nice to pretend to be an innovator rather than a box ticker.

It cements the proprietary processes agencies are so delighted to sell. From Disruption Days to mind numbing exercises built on Millward Brown's Brand Equity Pyramid - a wasteful process built on a wasteful process you could say.

Even more disturbing is the nagging feeling that agencies like these sessions because they mask either a lack of creativity or a lack of faith in it. It's much 'easier' to do a workshop and then develop the mediocre ideas, rubber stamped by all and sundry, than actually have to think, not to mention have to persuade clients to buy into properly good work.

There are probably some very mediocre planners who have risen quickly by being great moderators and process managers, not mention quite brilliant planners who haven't because they're better at thinking than being a performing seal.

February 11, 2011

In the space of just one week, I've heard the following in conversations:

"That VW Force thingy was lovely but I bet it's got nothing to do with the product"

"Did that Gorilla actually sell any chocolate?"

"I bet Fallon lost Sony when the client got sick of lovely ads that didn't sell any TV's"

"What's the point of that Swagger Wagon thing? How on earth will that sell MPV's to parents?" Read this if you're wondering.

You get the gist. Whenever something original, that tends to enter public consciousness emerges you get the same old yah, boo, hissers. Clever, funny, beautiful etc but will it actually sell anything?

(Please don't pelt me with specifics on the above stuff, of course there are issues and viewpoints on all, just indulge me with the general picture)

Basically, there's an inbuilt assumption that genuine creativity and proper commercial payback are diametrically opposed. Sure, creativity brings awards and kudos but does nothing for the bottom line.

You even get inside agencies. It wasn't long ago when someone told me that burgers we're never going to change society - which is right of course, but misses the point about getting people talking about the brand. Which brings me to my main point.

1. Very creative campaigns get talked about - which increases the effect. In other words, they create fame, they make people see the brand as the one making waves in the category, which in turn raises quality perceptions, price premium and all that other stuff without actually 'ratioanally' justifying any of it. Which brings us to point 2.

2. This kind of work is high on emotion and low on rational messaging, in fact, the rational stuff probably gets in the WAY of selling.

Of course it does, our instinctive side is far more highly developed than our rational side - and has the greater influence, we just convince ourselves it's not like that. That's why research, and testing work' is so tricky, we don't really know what influences our behaviour.

Throw in the fact that most people are light buyers in any given category and you soon work out it's more important to create the right feeling than the right message - it lodges itself in the subconcious for much longer.

That Gorilla thing that said nothing about Cadburys chocolate? 60% higher ROI than previous campaigns for chocolate.

So why do these myths pervade the corridors of our clients and, lets be honest, where we work? Because it challenges the fundamentals of everything they're taught in their marketing degrees and MBA's. It flies in the face of the awareness, familiarity, advantage and bonding brand metrics they tie their budgets and futures to. It questions the very way they work.

And since they pay the bills, agencies join in myth 100%, it's easier, we sell processes rather than ideas. Which is suicide. What we have that they don't is creativity, lets use it. And planning has a massive responsibility in this. I'm not suggesting rampant creativity per se, the work still needs relevance and credibility etc, that needs planning to create the correct space for the creative department to let rip.

It also means planning needs to help clients feel confident in what they're buying. I don't mean a shrill for the work, I mean when you get the right work, you provide compelling evidence it's the right thing to do.

Some days are better than others, some days are worse. Most days are pretty much ordinary and slip by unnoticed.

The first cup of tea is always the best, naturally made a little more special using a properly warmed pot

Porridge for breakfast

But jazzed up with some rhubard compote. Yes, it looks revolting but it tastes like heaven. Porridge is, of course, the breakfast of champions, complex carbs with all that slow release energy, which was much much required for:

Sitting in a room, putting things on a wall and tapping away on a quaintly out of date laptop

Producing nothing worthwhile in the first hour or so apart from some wall magnet art, thankfully making some sort of progress eventually, to be celebrated by more tea

And that is an average morning in the achingly, dynamically hip life I lead. Bet you Soho, Shoreditch and Madison Avenue lot don't feel so pleased with yourselves now eh?

In updated news, work's very own chef made Prawn Laksa for lunch. Nothing ordinary about that. Like I've said, ordinary moments can be made special with a little effort.

February 09, 2011

I'm increasingly in awe of the heroism you find in everyday life, from the crushingly ordinary guitar band, long since given up on a career in music still playing pubs out of sheer love, to the checkout girl who never fails to smile.

Somehow all the stuff is more precious to me than ever, in an increasingly knowing, ironic, transient and throw away world. Not least with a little boy who is growing up too fast.

So I'm quite taken by the idea of making more moments really count. Adding a little ceremony to ordinary stuff, a pause in the usual hurtle through the day. Searing lumps of more memory into your mind and others too.

We only remember the extra ordinary stuff - very good or bad, so why not make more stuff a little out of the ordinary too? So you're not just left with, lets be honest, super edited collection of photos or Facebook doodas, but proper memories.

Little gestures and rituals - obviously making tea in the pot everyday, but there's other stuff too. I know a family that has a singsong after their evening meal, don't laugh Mr and Mrs Hipster, if you can bring yourself to do something uncool, it's a lot of fun. There's having a winter BBQ instead of just grilling food inside - get wrapped up warm with mugs of mulled wine and it's a joy. Dressing for dinner, at home on a Wednesday night, just because. Writing a proper letter with proper pen and ink, rather than an email or bloody poke on Facebook. That kind of stuff.

Smack on for how Americans are feeling right now? Smashing the usual luxury car convetions so a considerer doesn't feel bad about splashing out? Making me like Eminem for the first time ever? A compelling piece of film I'll remember long after the other Superbowl stuff because it's not an en event, it makes me feel something?

All of the above and more. Makes you want to sell your sould and work for Wiedens. Beautiful planning, even more beautiful work. Well done, well done, well done.

February 03, 2011

I love this. It makes me feel warm as a Dad. It reminds me of those days as a little boy, endlessly roleplaying the Star Wars films with the toys and figures, my little mates, making up our own plots, arguing over who got to be Han Solo etc.

Reminds me that sometimes, the brief can just be, "Can we just have some great work please? Just try and make the little things thoughtful Dad's do to make their kids happy fun and exciting - you might want to tap into their fond memories of childhood and the role their Dad's in this' - but it's up to you".

Don't get me wrong, I like hard working people, or at least the ones that show a commitment and passion. If there's one thing that typifies successful planners, they seem to work harder than most people.

But I don't think that necessarily means consistent long hours - that's for another kind of hard worker -the martyr who does 'lots of work' and 'produces lots of stuff' without thinking if what they're doing is actually any good. And more worryingly, there are agencies and agency bosses who think the only people worth anything are the ones who stay until 10pm every day.

I don't want to incite agency uprisings or anything, and I know all about massive workloads, and sometimes they days have to be long, but ask yourself, are you working 24/7 because it produces better results or because you think it's expected?

Here are five myths about hard work worth pondering:

1. Long hours are always a good thing...stress accounts for 14% of sick leave per year. That isn't very productive

2. Long hours are always rewarded...bollocks it is. You show me one agency that pays overtime. For every jobsworth who's face fits, there's the poor bastard doing real work who always gets overlooked

3. People always know who is 'working hard' and who isn't....they don't. They don't always know you worked the weekend, they didn't see you come in early, they don't know what time you left. Long hours tend to vary by team - if they knew exactly by how much wouldn't they try and even it up?

4. Hard work is always admired....sometimes people think you're just disorganised or slow. In a planner, being chained to your desk all day makes you worse in the long term - you need to get out meeting real people and hoovering up interesting stuff. You need to 'not think' which usually when the best stuff clicks in your head.

5. Hard work makes clients happier....no it doesn't. Masses of hours on the timesheets leads to fee renegotiations which they, of course hate. They only care about the quality of your work. Of course, there are some that expect you to be available 24/7 which is to be lamented, but having your phone switched on for occasional late night chats and stuff isn't the same as being at your desk at 10pm.

There's a world of difference between working hard and being seen to work hard. One gets results, on gets you an ulcer. I guess much of this is driven by crap agencies selling a process to clients rather than ideas to appear 'professional' and show clients we're serious people like them.

We're not like them, we take our jobs seriously, but we do the stuff they can't - pretending to be like them only ends up in them figuring out they may as well do it themselves.........

February 02, 2011

I've been spoiled recently, manging to dodge staying away from home too much. So I'm out of practice at the kind of military precision required to pack for a couple of days away in 10 minutes - you know, big project, finishing in the small hours, getting up at the crack of dawn, that kind of thing.

So it was with a mixture of woeful acceptance and tired frustration how I took the news I'd forgotten to pack underwear and socks.

Now I'm a simple fellow and can make do with all sorts of hardships, I've even been known to drink tea from a machine. But I can't do a two day workshop in the same socks and pants.

So what were the options at 1am in Windsor? Just the one, Tesco 24 hour. But this pointles story doesn't reach a happy resolution.

Shower gel and deodorant...tick (forgot them too). Decent socks...tick. Pants? The only ones Tesco had in my size were these...

It was bad enough to be lurking around the health and beauty along with underwear sections of Tesco in the small hours with my long suffering account director (he had to pay, I'd forgotten my wallet too).

But to shell out for these monstrosities was hard to take. I swear I performed a little less well thanks to the knowledge I was wearing these mini deck chairs.

Mrs Northern thought they were hilarious, but you know what? I'm becoming quite fond of them now, what do you think?

Anyway, yet another example of the crushing absent mindedness and comedy of errors that is my life. Ask to me write your briefs and tell you new stuff about how housewives eat biscuits, don't ever ask me to pack for you, or anything that requires organisation in 'real life'.